Tuesday, August 14, 2018

New Tools to Manage Your Time on Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are both introducing new tools connected to the company’s recent commitment to the time well spent movement. Announced that both apps will soon be rolling out an activity dashboard where users can track the amount of time they spend on both Facebook and Instagram, along with two additional features to help monitor app usage. Facebook says it wants the time people spend on its apps to be intentional, positive and inspiring.

“It’s our responsibility to talk openly about how time online impacts people — and we take that responsibility seriously. These new tools are an important first step, and we are committed to continuing our work to foster safe, kind and supportive communities for everyone,” writes Facebook’s director of research, David Ginsberg, and Instagram’s product management director, Ameet Ranadive.

Both the Facebook and Instagram activity dashboards are located on the user’s settings page. For Instagram, the feature is labeled “Your Activity,” and on Facebook, it’s “Your Time On Facebook.” Clicking on either of these listings from the settings page will display a dashboard tracking the amount of time spent on the individual app by day. Clicking on the bars within the chart will show the total time spent that day. An option to set a daily reminder to close the app is located beneath the dashboard. There is also a link to “Notification Settings” feature where users can mute push notifications for the apps.